Group highlights Latino community, businesses

Shane Hoover CantonRep.com staff writer @shooverREP

Monday

Jun 30, 2014 at 6:30 AM

Local businessman Alfredo Carranza founded the Latino Business League last year. Based in a small second-floor office on the Goodwill campus at 408 Ninth St. SW, the not-for-profit league aims to encourage entrepreneurs and leaders in the Hispanic community and foster cross-cultural exchange with society at large.

Rinaldo Vega’s hands were covered in black grease, and his auto-repair shop was full. In one bay, Vega changed the brakes on a daily-driver. In the other, he had yanked the engine from a customized 1976 Olds 88.

Vega’s Garage opened about four months ago in an antique service station on the corner of Sixth Street and Shorb Avenue NW. Vega used to work from a garage behind his house, but he got too busy. The new location gave him more space to work and was drawing even more customers, he said.

Most of the clientele are Latinos, many of whom are looking for a mechanic who speaks Spanish, explained Vega, himself a native of Honduras.

“The Hispanic population around here, to tell the truth, they don’t have anywhere to go,” he said.

Vega, 54, belongs to Stark County’s small Latino business community. He moved to Canton in 2002 from Miami, Florida, following his son, Anibal “Junior” Vega, whose bilingual skills already had helped him find a job. In Ohio, the Vegas found better pay and a lower cost of living; eventually they opened their own business.

The father and son also have watched the small Hispanic community grow, and they’ve seen some of its newest members struggle to find their way in the United States.

“There’s a lot of Hispanic population around here and they’re lost,” Rinaldo Vega said.

SMALL, BUT GROWING

Stark County’s Latino or Hispanic community is small, accounting for just 1.7 percent of its 375,105 residents, according to 2012 U.S. Census Bureau estimates. It also is a growing community, having increased 71 percent between 2000 and 2010.

But it’s not monolithic.

Some Latinos are immigrants from the Caribbean and Central and South America. Others grew up in the United States. Some are citizens or permanent residents; others are undocumented. Some speak Spanish, English or both languages.

From a business perspective, the local Hispanic community also represents a new market and an entrepreneurial engine that could diversify the local economy and culture.

That’s what Wilter Perez Barrera, executive director of the Latino Business League, is advocating.

“The driving engine of American competitiveness has always been entrepreneurship,” Perez Barrera said. “It has not been the biggest, largest companies. It’s been the small businesses, right?”

Local businessman Alfredo Carranza founded the Latino Business League last year. Based in a small second-floor office on the Goodwill campus at 408 Ninth St. SW, the not-for-profit league aims to encourage entrepreneurs and leaders in the Hispanic community and foster cross-cultural exchange with society at large.

Carranza and Perez Barrera are both from Peru, but they have different backgrounds.

Carranza, 54, of Meyers Lake, is the pragmatic businessman, with the hands to prove a lifetime of hard work. In 1992, he was living in Queens, New York, when he took a job with Case Farms and landed in Amish Country. He stayed in Ohio, eventually building his own property management company.

Perez Barrera, 34, of Boardman, came to Ohio to study at Walsh University, where he graduated with a degree in government and foreign affairs. His office is stacked with books on history, bilingualism, law and the art of persuasion.

Perez Barrera compares today’s Latino immigrants with the European immigrants who came here more than a century ago. It’s a group that included local industrialists Henry Timken, John C. Dueber and Charles Diebold.

“A lot of them are individuals who, like the Irish, the Italians and the Germans, came here to better themselves and they contribute to the local economy tremendously,” Perez Barrera said.

NEW BUSINESSES

Latinos and immigrants in general have higher rates of entrepreneurship than other demographic groups and the general population, according to the Kauffmann Index of Entrepreneurial Activity.

Part of that trend is born from necessity.

“These folks are coming from backgrounds in countries where there are no safety nets,” said L. Rafael Rodriguez, business development manager for Canton Community Improvement Corporation. “You produce or you don’t eat, basically. They’re left to their own devices and one of the things they know how to do is provide a service, whatever service that might be. It is amazing how they’ve managed to carve out some niches.”

Stark County had 140 Hispanic-owned firms doing $289 million in sales in 2007, according to the latest statistics from the federal Survey of Business Owners; 93 of those businesses had no workers other than the owners.

Local Latino-owned businesses include restaurants and grocery stores, roofing contractors and auto repair shops, purchasing companies and even Republic Steel, which is owned by a Mexican company.

But compared to other parts of the United States, not only does Stark County have a small Latino population, it isn’t a big destination for immigrants. From 2008 to 2012, foreign-born persons accounted for less than two percent of the local population. State wide, immigrants made up 4 percent of the population, and the national mark was 13 percent, according to the Census Bureau.

Other places have been more attractive to immigrants, but Perez Barrera noted Canton’s assets, such as easy access to Cleveland and several nearby universities.

“Geographically, it’s perfectly located,” he said.

NEW MARKET

A growing Hispanic community could also be a new market for existing companies.

Carranza said there is a reason two Latino groceries have opened on 12th Street, and retail giants such as Wal-Mart sell Hispanic products.

“As you see those inmigrantes when they work 10, 12 hours day, end of the week, get a pay check, what do they do? They go and they buy groceries, phones, gasoline for cars, cars, clothing,” he said.

Latinos numbered 6,030 in 2012, according to Census Bureau estimates for Stark County, but the number is probably higher because not everyone who is Hispanic identifies as such, Perez Barrera said.

A 2012 Nielsen study predicts the Hispanic population in the U.S. with grow faster than the population as a whole, and the Hispanic market has a median age of 28, nine years younger than the average for the entire market.

But business strategies that work for second, third or fourth generation Latinos won’t work the same with new arrivals. The league will be holding workshops to help businesses with their marketing strategies, Perez Barrera said.

“I think that it’s time for companies and businesses to intentionally and strategically target them because this is a market that has not been engaged properly,” he said.

BUILDING CONNECTIONS

On June 7, the league held its first event, a Latino Festival, outside La Reyna Mexican Store on 12th Street NW. Perez Barrera said the group will host other cultural events, food festivals and round-tables on the impact of immigration in the local economy.

The league also is trying to bridge the gap between Hispanic professionals and new immigrants. Young professionals can become so assimilated that they want nothing to do with those who have just arrived or are undocumented, Perez Barrera said.

He and Carranza said they want the Latino Business League to go beyond business and become a hub for the Latino community.

“A lot of events are going to try to merge the Latino culture with the community at large, and be able to have that exchange, and by that exchange to help the people get a little more acquainted with the uniqueness of the culture so that they’ll be able to better interact with each other,” Perez Barrera said.

Back at the mechanic shop, Rinaldo Vega had heard of the Latino Business League, but said he didn’t know much about the group.

What he did know, he said, was that members of his community were concerned about crime and immigration status, that they still tended to divide along national lines, and that they largely went unnoticed by the community around them.

“We need to get all together, organize,” he said. “That way we can be a group.”

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